DUDRA BUTLER: Timing finally right for local blacks in 1953

SAN ANGELO, Texas - In the fall of 1953, Mary Frances Simpson McFall took advantage of the opportunity before her.

In an issue of Angelo State University Alumni Magazine, McFall acknowledges that Ben Kelly did in fact open the door to people of color to attend San Angelo College in 1953, and she was among the first to walk through it.

Both McFall’s parents were educators who stressed the importance of getting an education. They knew the climate of a segregated South at the time, but they were not going to let that deter their plans for their daughters.

McFall’s sister had applied to San Angelo College in 1951 and had been turned down. But SAC gave her money to attend the all-black college in Prairie View. McFall stated that she had always wanted to go to Prairie View, but then word came that Benjamin Kelly, a standout football player, had just been accepted into SAC in September.

Timing played a major roll. In 1951, the climate was just not right. But maybe, just maybe, things were on the horizon for change.

With word of Kelly’s acceptance two years later, “I applied and it was just that simple,” McFall said in the magazine article.

Economically, it just made sense to attend junior college in San Angelo. McFall had just graduated from Blackshear High School, an all-black school in San Angelo, at age 17 and visited the SAC campus with her mother. McFall recalled, “Nobody even seemed to pay any attention or act like it was anything unusual.”

McFall was named an outstanding student when she became the first black graduate of San Angelo College. She went on to Texas Southern University for a year before becoming one of the first blacks to enroll and graduate from the University of Texas when it opened its doors to African-Americans.

Then she was one of the first black women admitted to the University of Texas School of Law. McFall practiced general law in Dallas for many years.

McFall speaks of her admiration for people who tried to right the racial wrongs of that era, such as Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court and later became the first black appointed to the high court.

That and some of her experiences in a segregated San Angelo pushed her toward the legal profession. “I was really inspired to go to law school by Marshall and the civil rights movement,” McFall said.

It was a time in which the city was divided into almost separate racial communities. There was a Negro community, an Anglo community and a Hispanic community, with limited interaction among them. Downtown San Angelo was the only place where all of the groups came together. McFall spoke of classmates who seemed to be ashamed to speak to blacks or act like they knew them.

In the article she recalled an incident when she, her sister, her mother and her elderly grandmother got on a city bus. Her grandmother sat in the wrong place and the bus driver spoke to her very harshly.

“This black soldier on the bus stood up for my grandmother, but the bus driver came at him,” she said. “My grandmother asked the soldier to get off the bus so he wouldn’t get into trouble. The driver followed the soldier onto the street, then called the police. Thankfully the soldier had disappeared when the police arrived.”

This was the climate — blacks were to do what was expected of them, to “stay in their place.” Thank God for a few good people who saw it as the right time to do the right thing.

As we come to the close of Black History Month, it has been a pleasure to honor Mary Frances Simpson McFall, a groundbreaking native San Angeloan.